Traditionally, electric utilities have supplied home owners and businesses with electric energy. As demand for electric power increases so has the environmental awareness of the pollutants that are created in generating electricity to meet the growing demand.
While there are many efforts to develop renewable sources of electric energy all across the United States, most of these commercial scale efforts are still confronted with the same complexities as developing traditional centralized generation facilities such as coal or nuclear power plants.
The biggest issue facing any type of new centralized generation is how to transmit the generated electricity to the customer who is using it? Today in the US, almost all of the large capacity electric transmission lines are operating at their maximum safe capacity and in many cases existing transmission lines are old and need to be replaced. This situation with transmission lines puts utility companies in an increasingly difficult situation for continuing to meet the increasing demand for electrical energy.
The lack of transmission capacity, expanding environmental and regulatory requirements and political pressure is driving utilities to look and consider a multitude of new innovative ideas that have never before been considered to try and meet the ever increasing demand for electric energy. One of these is the concept of Micro Distributed Renewable Generation. Simply put, this means locating renewable forms of electric energy generation at the point where the energy is being used instead of transmitting the energy long distances from a centralized point of generation.
The concept of Micro Distributed Renewable Generation is attracting not only utilities as owner operators, but also the attention of an increasing number of home and small business owners. Micro Distributed Renewable Generation systems use a device called an inverter that conditions the generated electricity into a form of electricity useable by the electric appliances (AC alternating current) in a home or small business.
A Micro Distributed Renewable Generation system can be operated as a grid connected inverter or standalone, often referred to as a grid-tied or off grid respectively. The primary benefit of grid-tied operation is that any generated energy that is not consumed in the home or business can be routed back to the utility company and serve to in affect spin the owner's electric power meter backwards reducing the amount of purchased electricity from the utility company (net metering). For utilities, as owner operators, of the Micro Distributed Renewable Generation grid-tied systems it becomes an energy resource like any other generation asset.
As more manufacturers introduce solar and wind powered generation systems the cost of these systems are becoming more and more affordable. What has not been addressed and is not becoming more affordable is the labor costs associated with installing Micro Distributed Renewable Generation systems with grid-tied inverters. The average cost to install a fully integrated system large enough to power an average 1000 square foot home or small business is in the order of $ 5,000 or more. Most of this cost is the time consuming wiring involved with connection of the grid-tied inverter to the circuit breaker panel and the generation devices.
While new construction offers simplified access for wiring, the labor is still significant. Existing structures interject a multitude of complexities that all add labor costs to the installation. This includes coordination with owners for access, drilling holes in walls, pulling electric cables through hard to reach places, clean up and finishing work to restore the interior décor of the home or small business.
For there to be a widely adopted Micro Distributed Renewable Generation system using a grid-tied inverter, there is a need for an installation and connection system that will be simple, safe, intuitive, and an easily deployed process. The system will need to offer value to the home and small business owner, utility companies and installers.
It is this system and method of installing Micro Distributed Renewable Generation and grid tied inverters that are within this present invention.